Friday, September 15, 2006
JVC to Market Speaker That 'Breathes' Music

Japan's JVC has said it will soon market the "Pulsating Sphere Speaker", a first-of-a-kind speaker system that "breathes" sound rather than vibrates.

The "Pulsating Sphere Speaker" is covered with 11 pentagonal membranes that emit sound in all directions, unlike traditional speakers where the sound is projected forward through a single vibrating membrane.

This technology uses the entire surface of the Pulsating Sphere speaker as an emitter. With its 12-sided dodecahedral design, it has the ideal structure to create this size of multi-sided polyhedron sphere. For this reason, the compact ball-shaped speaker has the same frequency characteristics in every direction, faithfully reproducing the original sound source and sound field, so much so that the listener is barely aware of the speaker.

"We plan to begin sales throughout Japan and the world in the first half of 2007," said Akiko Sakakibara, spokeswoman for Victor Co. of Japan Ltd. (JVC), a unit of electronics giant Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd.

The speaker's 11 membranes move with the sound as it comes from the center to the exterior, meaning it "breathes" rather than "vibrates" like traditional speakers, the company said.

"It's the first realization of a technology which acousticians have been dreaming of for 60 years as they find this to be the ideal way to reproduce sound faithfully and naturally," said JVC engineer Jiro Nakaso.

Unlike traditional speakers, the pulsating sphere "has no hard surface, which prevents the distortion which comes with it," he said.

JVC will exhibit this technology at the JVC booth at the A&V Festa 2006 being held at Pacifico Yokohama from Thursday to Sunday September 21-24.